About

Why Serious on Semiconductors exists, and how it is maintained

Why this site exists

Semiconductor geopolitics is producing a torrent of research — from intergovernmental organisations like the OECD, industry bodies like SIA and WSTS, and think tanks like Institut Montaigne. Country ecosystem reviews, subsidy benchmarking exercises, supply-chain risk analyses, and AI-driven demand projections all carry insights relevant to India’s semiconductor strategy. But they land across dozens of websites, in PDFs that few policymakers have time to read end-to-end.

For the Indian policy community specifically, nobody is systematically curating these reports and asking the question that matters: what does this mean for India?

This site fills that gap. It does three things:

  1. Monitors key publishers weekly — OECD, SIA, WSTS, Institut Montaigne, and others — so nothing slips through.
  2. Curates each relevant report with an editorial summary, extracted data points, and a dedicated “What This Means for India” section.
  3. Enables comparison across publicly-reported data — with India always visually highlighted, so the Indian reader can find the relevant reference point at a glance.

Editorial principle

Every report curated here must answer: what does this mean for India? Even research on Mexico, Costa Rica, or EU subsidy regimes is worth the effort if it illuminates a choice, a benchmark, or a warning for India’s semiconductor ambitions.

Reports are rated 1-5 on an India-relevance scale. The rating is editorial, not algorithmic. A rating of 5 means the report speaks directly to an active Indian policy debate (subsidies, OSAT, workforce). A rating of 1 means the report is curated for completeness but has only incidental relevance to India.

Sources tracked

Publisher Type What they produce
OECD IGO Country ecosystem reviews, subsidy benchmarking, value-chain mapping, capacity databases
SIA Industry Body State of the industry reports, AI/data-centre demand analyses, workforce studies
WSTS Industry Body Global semiconductor market forecasts, regional sales data
Institut Montaigne Think Tank European semiconductor strategy, export-control scenario analysis

More publishers will be added as the site grows.

Methodology

  • Sources: OECD iLibrary, SIA publications page, WSTS press releases, Institut Montaigne publications, supplemented by other think tank and government reports as they appear.
  • Curation cadence: weekly monitoring, ad-hoc curation as reports appear.
  • Data extracted into data/datapoints.yml is always cited back to the source report and page number where possible. Where the source is a national programme announcement rather than a published report, that is noted explicitly.
  • Cross-country comparisons: rendered client-side in the browser with Observable Plot. India is always highlighted in saffron (#FF9933).

Who maintains this

Curated by Pranay Kotasthane, Deputy Director at the Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru. Pranay co-authored When the Chips Are Down: A Deep Dive into a Global Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2023) and leads Takshashila’s Semiconductor Geopolitics programme.

Siliconpolitik Project → pranaykotas.com → High-Tech Geopolitics Programme →

How to contribute

  • Suggest a report — if you come across a semiconductor publication that should be curated here, open an issue with the title and URL.
  • Spot an error or newer data — same: open an issue, or email pranay@takshashila.org.in.
  • Use the data — all curated content is freely reusable with attribution. The underlying YAML data files are in the repository.

Technical notes